The Ohio Democrat. (Logan, O. [Ohio]) 1886-1906, 1887-06-11
RESTORING FERTILITY.
The Most Certain and Rapid Means OF Tns.
proving Exnausted Land.

Every farmer knows the value OF a
grass and clover sod for blowing in as
manure. We have been educated to
this knowledge from our first acquain-
tance with the work of farm. Sod is
always considered as the natural ground
for crop Of corn. and, where corn is
not grown, wheat is sown on sod
turned under in the summer and left to
decay until seeding time. And not
only practice but science teaches us this.
The results Of hundreds of experiments
by the most careful expcrimenters
in the field and in the laboratory all go
to prove the truth and soundness of the
common practice.
Grass is an exhaustive crop and
clover is still more so. While clover is
not grass, yet as it takes the place of
grass in the actual work of farm, and
is to all intents and purposes grown
for the same object as grass is, we will
here consider it in the light of q grass
and merely distinguish it by name. A
crop of 1000 pounds timothy hay
contains 60 pounds of nitrogen and
$50 pounds of mineral matter;
1000 pounds of clover contains about
1S0 pounds of nitrogen and $50
pounds of mineral matter, and If,
as is quite commonly done, three or
four crops of hay are taken from one
seeding, it is easily seen that large
amount of plant food is drawn from the
soil, and yet the soil is improved in
character by this growth, and we find
it far more easy to grow large crops of
the most valuable grain after few
years of grass or clover and the blowing
in of the sod, than it was previously.
How then is this improvement brought
about and whence is this accretion of
fertility drawnp
When we ask ourselves this question,
and seek satisfactory reply, we are
met by one of the unsolved problems of
agriculture and variety of SUPPOSE
tions which have been offered to ac-
count for the facts, but which do not
satisfy us. Some careful and very COM
petent investi gators believe that q large
portion of the nitrogen is drawn from
the atmosphere, which contains seven
ty-nine per cent of its bulk of it. 9th
ers believe that the roots of grass, and
of clover especially, draw u large guam
tity of their nitrogen from the soil,
where it has existed in an inert form in
the decayed organic matter, as yet not
fully decomposed, but remaining in the
form of insoluble hu mus until it is
attacked by these roots. Others
believe that these crops pro-
duce q very large quantity
of roots and of leaves and stems
which die and decay and never become
apparent to us excepting in some con-
spicuous instances, and that this or
ganic matter, decaying constantly in
the moist, warm soil as it gives place to
successive growths, forms u nucleus or
seed bed for the myriads of nitrifying
germs which draw nitrogen from the air
and oxidize it, and thus produce large
quantity of nitric acid. Necessarily
this decomposition of organic matter
has an active result upon the mineral
elements of the soil and renders them
soluble by separating the silica from
them. Perhaps all these results are
going on in the soil together, and thus
the remarkable effects of crop of
clover or of grass are explained ration
ally and satisfactorily.
The roots and stubble of grass and
clover contain large quantity of or
ganic matter as shown in the following
table.
Dry Sub Phos.
Per Acre. Pounds. NDrogen. Acid. Potash.
Clover. .............6 $3.50 1900 Tl.0 no
Grass and clover. 5000 1000 $50 $50 $50 $50
These figures are, no doubt. below
the average of good crops. 1t has been
found that the living roots and stubble
of a four-year-old sod have been equal
in weight to one-siXth more than last
years total crop. Also that an old
meadow or pasture has been found to
contribute to the soil four times the
amount of the last years surface herb
age. We have found by natural test
that an old quack grass sod has
amounted to four pounds Of organic
matter, carefully freed from mineral
soil. per square foot, thus contributing
as much us eighty tons per acre of fer
tilizing matter quite equal in value to
ordinary barn-yard manure. A square
foot of sod from an old meadow in
Eastern Pennsylvania has been found
to weigh nearly as much, making a
little over seventy-five tons per acre.
In both these cases the sod was cut one
foot thick. and was in great part made
up of mass of fibrous decayed vege-
table matter much like peat. The lower
soil contained still large portion of
similar matter, us it was dark brown
and easily pulverulent for three or four
inches deeper. A block of soil from q
rich cave in u forest in North Carolina
has been found equally rich in organic
matter for three feet in depth, while the
rich prairies of Iowa and Eastern Kan
sas have gathered from the centuries of
contributions from the grass, u mass of
organic matter which makes up the
larger part of the soil for six feet in
depth in many places. There is no
more satisfactory proof of the wealth of
fertility contributed to the soil by long
continued growth of grass than in these
rich prairies, where the fertility has
been accumulated really from atmos-
pheric sources for ages.
We say ''from atmospheric sources''